


Worth It, After All

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Alpha Timeline Fluff [14]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Conversations, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, Implied Relationships, Multi, Reminiscing, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3083231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the woods near Rose's house, Dave braids Jade's hair and listens to memories of her family.  Alpha Timeline Fluff, implied Dave/Jade/Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth It, After All

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by the 12/28/14 [15_minute_ficlets](http://15_minute_ficlets.dreamwidth.org) word #216, and has been revised and extended from the version on my journal. It falls between [To the Lees](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1891395) and [Every Child a Wanted Child](http://archiveofourown.org/works/520297).

"This is ridiculous," Jade says after the third time her hair gets snagged and snarled by opportunistic branches. "I think I have a comb somewhere in my sylladex. I need you to braid my hair."

Dave blinks. "What makes you think I'll be any good at that?"

"It doesn't need to be perfect! Besides, it's easier to braid someone else's hair -- better angles -- and I want to sit down for a minute anyway. My left boot is trying to eat my sock."

She hands Dave a green plastic comb, yanks off her footwear, and parks her ass on a tree root hanging over the edge of the stream. "Ahhhh, there we go. Now play hairdresser."

Dave shrugs and sets to work. Jade's hair is a jungle, full of tangles and life that crackles out at him in little blue-white sparks. He does his best not to pull, but she seems used to any accidental pain. Not surprising, given how readily the strands seem to knot.

"I think your hair's trying to eat the comb," he says after a while. "That run in your family?"

He regrets the question the moment it leaves his mouth.

Jade rolls with it, though. "Oh, probably. Not that John ever grew his hair long enough to run valid comparative tests. I do know mine puffs out like his when it's short. I cut it all off in the twenties, you know, once I ran away from home. The first time we saw each other after that, we looked almost like twins -- at least from the neck up."

Dave tries to imagine teenage Jade in the twenties: short hair, flapper dress, maybe one of those big hats and a feather boa or a string of fake pearls... The picture won't click until he adds old army surplus boots and a bunch of sparking wires in her hands.

Jade sighs, calling him back to the present. "Obviously we don't look much alike these days, even if we're only considering hair. Age does tend to bring out differences. For instance, John went gray like salt and pepper."

"Yeah?"

"Mm-hmm. First it was like somebody dusted a tiny sprinkle of powdered sugar over his head. Then every year there was a little more white and a little less black until I realized one day the foreground and background had switched, and I couldn't put my finger on when, exactly, he'd gone from a pinch of white scattered in black to a pinch of black scattered in white."

"Sounds like old school TV static," Dave says. "Which fits, I guess."

Jade laughs. "It does! Tell that to him the next time you cross paths in Hollywood." She hums under her breath, a sort of tuneless rumble, and points her bare toes in the clear rushing water downstream from Rose's newly purchased house, which they've escaped while their hostess argues with her editors over the specifics of her upcoming book tour. Rose in a snit is a marvel of pointed snark, but they've heard the whole song and dance already and Jade has itchy feet. Hence hiking.

Dave separates her hair into three thick sections. Each strand is half again as long as his arm from shoulder to fingertips. The whole mess is heavy as shit, which he can verify from personal experience given how many times it's tried to smother him to death in his sleep.

He's never quite had the nerve to ask if Jade is imitating the Batterwitch on purpose, or if she just likes the style for her own reasons.

"Of course, I'm only talking about his _hair_ ," Jade says, turning her head and nearly tugging one section of hair out of Dave's hand. "His mustache went stark white a good decade before the rest even started to turn. I told him it looked faker than those Groucho Marx nose-and-glasses sets they sell for Halloween, and asked where the zipper was on his human suit since he was obviously an alien in disguise."

"Oh, burn," Dave says. "Hold still or you're gonna make me lose my place."

Jade faces forward again and says, "He didn't speak to me for over a year after that. Not that we speak very often even now -- what is there to talk about, if we avoid all the arguments? But I know that I _can_ call him whenever I want, and he'll answer, just like I'll always answer him. It was strange to lose that, however briefly."

"Mmmm," Dave agrees around a mouthful of hair. Braiding is tricky work and not to be attempted by the fainthearted. Probably not by anyone with fewer than three hands, to be on the safe side, but hey. He lives dangerously.

"I'm sorry you and Rose had to grow up alone," Jade says over the mindless, white noise burble of water.

"Yeah, and we're sorry you had to grow up with an alien fishqueen for a mom. We can play the comparative trauma game some other day," Dave says. He doesn't say anything about John. Jade may be in a reminiscing mood, but he's not gonna be the one to mention the part where her brother stuck his head in the sand and refused to denounce the Baroness, though John has to know the truth as bone-deep and dead-sure as Jade does. John's a great friend, and he does have his son to think of, but sometimes Dave really wonders about that guy. How could he let Jade slip away and not chase after her?

"Hand me the elastic." Jade does, and he wraps it around the end of his lopsided masterpiece of hairstyling. The stretchy bit is neon lime and the ends are weighted with little decorative skulls, made of stainless steel and painted like a rainbow on acid. He thinks Jade could concuss someone with the whipcrack of all that hair and metal. He thinks he probably shouldn't find that idea as sexy as he does.

He thinks he won't mention either of those thoughts to Rose.

"Thank you, Dave," Jade says as she stands from her perch on the gnarled root. "I should have done this before we started hiking, but I'm not used to tidying up outside of a laboratory environment."

Dave shoves his hands in his jeans pockets and shrugs. "Eh, no big. You know I'd never turn down a chance to get my hands on a foxy lady."

Jade finishes drying her feet on the hem of her skirt and starts pulling on her socks. "Rapidly becoming a silver fox, I'm afraid. Only much less evenly than John, and it will take years for the shift to work its way down from my roots. Until then, it's all streaks and mess." She shoves her feet back into her boots, stomps once or twice to check the fit, and tugs the braid over her shoulder. "I've been thinking I might just bleach and dye the whole mess -- go white all at once and get it over with. What do you think?"

Dave runs his eyes up the uneven length of the braid. It shades from nearly pure black at the tip to nearly pure white at the crown of Jade's head, with streaks and swirls of every shade of gray between. It's like one of those expensive sweaters Rose likes to buy, the ones that fade from purple to pink, or lavender to black, or in one very weird case, black to some impossible not-color that makes his brain hurt to look at. There's a word for that. It's on the tip of his tongue.

"Ombré," he says.

Jade blinks.

"Like Rose's fancy sweaters," he clarifies. "I figure, if people pay stupid amounts of money to dye shit in that pattern, they must think it's, you know, aesthetically awesome. And your hair's doing that for free."

Jade is laughing at him now, he can tell, even if it only shows in the corners of her eyes. "You may have a point. I don't fit into most of Rose's clothing, but she tends to buy her sweaters a size or two on the large size, doesn't she? Shall we steal a few when we head back indoors?"

"One for you and one for me?" Dave says.

Jade claps her hands. "Yes! We can lounge around on the bed wearing them and nothing else, to surprise her when she comes back from writing horrible death scenes to work out her frustration. And I have idea to make it even better. We'll dye _your_ hair instead of mine, with the same effect. Pick a color!"

Like that's even a question. "Red," Dave says.

He'll get some funny looks when he heads back out west, but whatever, he can deal. If Jade and Rose are happy, nobody else's opinion counts for shit. He might even start a new fashion trend. And a bunch of kids walking around, looking like their heads have been dipped in blood... well, it's not a very focused message, but it certainly can't hurt. Sometimes you have to shock people out of their happy, blinkered lives.

The truth is never pretty, after all, and the only path to freedom leads through war. But that doesn't mean they have to fight alone.

Dave follows Jade back along the stream toward Rose's weird ass modernist mansion, watches the skulls at the end of her braid glint in the patchy sun, and thinks John Crocker has no idea what he's missing.


End file.
